


as a badge of a beating heart

by ashen_key



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Background Pairing, Character Study, Clothing, Gen, Prompt Fic, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-03
Updated: 2012-08-03
Packaged: 2017-11-11 08:04:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/476375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashen_key/pseuds/ashen_key
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They expect her to wear black.</p>
            </blockquote>





	as a badge of a beating heart

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Как символ живого сердца](https://archiveofourown.org/works/592804) by [Helga Winter (hwinter)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hwinter/pseuds/Helga%20Winter)



> Many thanks to ladyoflorien for beta-ing. ♥
> 
> Written for the [Clint Barton/Natasha Romanoff Promptathon](http://be-compromised.livejournal.com/60569.html), for the prompt:
> 
>  
> 
> _In war time women turn to red_  
>  swivel-up scarlet and carmine  
> not in solidarity with spilt blood  
> but as a badge of beating hearts.

They expect her to wear black. 

She's the _Black Widow_ , after all; they say her epithet and think _assassin_ , and all assassins must obviously wear black. And it's true, she's killed while wearing black. She's killed while wearing slinky black cocktail dresses and she's killed while wearing plain black suits and, once, she killed while wearing black at a funeral. 

Mostly, she wears black because that's the office-wear code. Hell if she knows why, it's not like turning up to work is like going to a funeral (although sometimes she does have to work _at_ funerals, but that's a separate issue).

(She wonders, though, when they're going to notice that her catsuits are never actually _black_. They are blue, they are grey, they are colours that actually blur into shadow. 

Which black does not.)

She's a spy before she's a secret agent, and right now she's a secret agent before she's an assassin. But before all of these she is _Natasha_ , and Natasha is not someone who walks through life wearing the black of death, grief, and nine-to-five. She wears purple heels to the office, she wears turquoise blouses under her fitted jacket (although not at once, not as _Natasha_ ); she paints red over her lips not because she intends to seduce, but because she's announcing that she's alive.

Clothes are performative; the Red Room taught her that, and she has always been a good student. She separates her personal clothes from the garments that help create her personae, but both wardrobes are created with the same lessons in mind. Her teachers said, clothes are both reflections and projections. Clothes are made up of codes; even the ones chosen purely for comfort, for that in itself is a message. Clothes are a statement, and frankly wearing all black clothing can code one as a waiter or a sales assistant (which admittedly can be useful). 

Into _her_ wardrobe go colourful, artistic shoes, and above them hang a-line skirts and dresses made of both solid colours and solid geometric patterns. She has blouses, cardigans, and jackets arranged like an artist's row of paints, and there is black, of course. Black shoes, black pants, black skirts, black jackets, black blouses; she doesn't _avoid_ the colour, she just prefers to counter it with the rest of the rainbow. 

She wears pink to her wedding. It's a childish colour, but sometimes it doesn't hurt to be childish and marry your best friend while giggling, even if Elvis is in attendance. It's a bold colour, because no one who's uncomfortable in their own skin would wear it, and it's such a glorious shade of fuck-off pink that she wears her wedding dress to Monaco for the Stark job.

She wears it because she's in a bad mood at having to be PA to a narcissistic womaniser who undresses her with his eyes and doesn't recognise the danger when Romanoff reacts instead of Rushman. She wears it because she was woken up at two in the morning with a promotion, and had to leave Clint alone in her bed when he wasn't supposed to be there to begin with. She wears the dress as a lucky charm because a little luck would be nice; she wears it because only a woman who knows what she wants would wear that shade, and she needs to borrow that certainty for a while. She wears it as an act of rebellion against all of the neutral-toned bullshit she's had to put up with for months, and she's fairly certain that Stark just sees it as an attempt to get his attention. 

She's a fan of pink, in general. She's also a fan of red and orange, and she's very much a fan of yellow. Yellow is the colour of the sundress she wears after Stark and Banner are other peoples' problems. She has bruises on her arms from rubble, but she lets her hair dry as it pleases, pulls on a dress the colour of daffodils in full bloom, and threads her fingers with Clint’s as they stroll through the San Diego Zoo as though they don't have a care in the world. 

She wears yellow after defeating the Chitauri, too. Yellow and brown and orange with her blue jeans. The jeans are ( _casual, off-duty, no need to impress_ ) jeans, but her yellow jacket says something as well. It's a cheerful colour, marigolds and sunbursts after a storm. It's subtler than the red she was tempted to wear, because a statement of _I am alive_ written in the hue of blood might have been too much of a dare. 

Colours, after all, are codes that a prince like Loki would be able to read. 

She escapes to New Zealand with Clint, and she buys an off-season dress that is all the shades of the rainbow. It's a pretty thing, long with an uneven, layered hem that flutters against her legs; it's colourful and sleeveless and a bit too _summer_ for the autumn beach where they are recovering. Her solution is to pull on her red knee-high boots and steal Clint's hoodie (purple, faded with age and wear), and then challenge him to race to keep warm. 

In a few weeks, they'll go back and she will pull on the black uniform of an office-worker, and she'll break out her burgundy platforms and the matching blouse. There will be funerals, and out of respect for the dead she will wear the blacks, navys, and mauves.

But for now she's running in a rainbow dress, and her heart is beating.


End file.
